Hi everyone, welcome to my blog! I am a UK volunteer with voluntary service overseas and I'll be living in Rwanda in a small town called Nzige. Nzige is in Rwamagana district to the east of the country towards Tanzania.I'll be going out to Rwanda as an education volunteer to work on UNICEF's child friendly schools campaign. by teaching in a teacher training college and setting up a resource centre.

Sunday, 15 May 2011

4 months in Rwanda

Today marks the end of four months in Rwanda. As I am about to start my fifth month I realise that before I know it I will have done six months here. This academic term is a massive fourteen weeks (three down, eleven to go!) but the last academic term of the Rwandan school year is very short and mostly focused on exams so once this term is up I will have done most of my work for the year. Its quite scary really. Another volunteer said that the days go by slowly but the weeks go by fast, I couldn’t agree more.

Its been a time of mostly highs and a few lows, many frustrations and small (but significant!) successes and many many new experiences. I can honestly say I’ve never had to learn more, I’ve adapted to many things which a year ago I would never have thought possible and I’ve already learned more about myself than I could ever have imagined. So who knows what the next four months will hold!

Getting my resource centre into some kind of shape is my main priority at the moment. While I still have no furniture I feel that I’ve at last got underway with making some of the resources. My lack of furniture is causing me great frustration and I fear that I will be lucky if I am able to teach in there before the end of the academic year...but I keep reminding myself that the greatest resource you have is yourself.If I have to carry around all my resources in a cardboard box then so be it. I will carry on doing what I’m trying to do regardless. It will come together eventually, I just have to keep some faith and keep chasing it.

The four month anniversary required some sort of celebration so I went to Steven and Mary’s house in Rwamagana for the weekend and we went to the ‘Dereva Hotel’ for steak and chips which was a lovely treat! We had a nice relaxing time and I helped Mary to make some resources for some methodology work she was planning to do with some local schools in Rwamagana. I have become quite expert at making bottle top counting strings already! I use a rock as a hammer to bash a nail through them and put them on pieces of plastic twine. Well heres to another month in Rwanda!

Making bottle top counting strings and clocks out of plastic lids on Mary and Steven's patio